


Some lonely evening on Omega

by helila



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, garrus is one sad lonely boi, time to feel real sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22775599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helila/pseuds/helila
Summary: Our turian boi got the blues and the big sad.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	Some lonely evening on Omega

The view from the apartment window is depressing. Then again, alternatives are non-existent, the view is nearly the same from everywhere.

Same anxiety-inducing lighting, same crowded streets littered with -literal, and figurative- trash, same groaning machinery and loud, wheezing air filters that threathen to fail at any time.

Same exhausted faces, jittery movement, shifty eyes.

With identical mornings and evenings, time has lost it’s meaning. It’s but only one day streching on infinitely, with intermittent sleep and crime, every day the same soup re-heated.

Somehow, an entire year has passed like this. The thought frustrates Garrus.

Between the day he arrived and the current one, he has spent nearly every waking moment trying pick apart Omega’s rotten foundations. He had hoped, that with every precise headshot and flawlessy executed ambush, another support piece would fall away. If he killed enough, sabotaged enough, eventually something would change. Eventually, the system would fall apart.

He’d bring justice to all suffering under it.

But every time a thug dropped dead, another one would step in it’s place. Shut down one smuggling operation, another one gets away under the same time. New hideouts would spring up in some unknown part of Omega.

_“You’re banging your head against a brick wall.”_ Shepard’s voice emerged from his thoughts. It wasn’t the first time that his former Commander “spoke”, and she wasn’t the only one.

Ashley, Tali, nearly all of his old Normandy squadmates would occasionally visit in the form of some memory replaying in his mind, or as if they were there to react to his current surroundings. But Shepard was the most recurring.

Even with his new crew, and a busy life, the past was still haunting him.

“How would you do it, Commander?” he asked, quietly.

Shepard would furrow her brows, he imagined. Eyes squinting in concentration. One hand on her chin, the other supporting her elbow.

Finally she looks at him, blue eyes gleaming, the corner of her mouth turning up in a small smile.

_“I’d get help.”_

Garrus lets out a sigh, frustrated. Suddenly aware that he is pretending to talk to a dead person, he brings up his omni-tool to find something to distract himself with. He really can’t afford to lose his mind now.

But part of his psyche has already immersed itself in this fantasy, and not-Shepard steps closer, putting a hand on Garrus’s shoulder.

_“Get help.”_

It’s the same soothing voice she would use with troubled civilians, people that found themselves at the wrong place in the wrong time. Facing their desperation, and even aggression, Shepard not only managed to keep calm, but turn to them with empathy. Garrus felt equal amount of confusion and admiration about it, struggling to reconcile the Commander’s way with the turian “shoot first, ask later” mentality. He had witnessed her de-escalate situations that would have definitely ended in bloodbath, had anyone else been assigned to deal with it. If he himself had to.

After all, his whole business now on Omega was prime example of that.

“You can’t help me” he stated, still glaring at the omni-tool. “You died.”

Her hand doesn’t move from his shoulder.

_“You have friends, Garrus.”_

He does. The team formed with Sidonis has been expanding, and they are all remarkable, good people. Dedicated. Reliable. When people with a good cause manage to work together so efficiently, truly great things can be achieved. Just like back on the Normandy. It’s just…

“But I’ve lost some too.”

His subvocals would’ve betrayed him, has anyone been around to hear him speak. If Shepard was actually there with him now.  
But she was buried in ice and snow somewhere on Alchera, never found, never properly said goodbye to. He knew that her home colony, Mindoir held a wake and funeral for the Commander, with an empty casket. But Garrus didn’t attend. It didn’t feel right for him to go. Ashley sent a message the following day, complaining about the unecessary and awfully long speeches, and that was the last time anyone from the old squad has contacted him. The good old days were officially over.

_“Garrus…”_

In a way, he expected it. But on a deeper level, it felt like a sharp knife slipping under his plates, right into the heart.  
Quite a lot of good memories tied him to that ship, to that crew. The last one being the Commander quietly humming a song while working on the Mako.

“How could things go so wrong, so fast, Shepard? How could we not see it coming?”

In response, not-Shepard hangs her head, almost looking guilty.  
A little smudge of oil on her face, where she absent-mindedly touched it with her hand after finishing the repairs.

“You shouldn’t have been alone out there” Garrus says, barely louder than a whisper.

She nods, then slowly rises her face too meet his gaze, and Garrus can’t remember ever seeing those eyes so full of sadness. It’s the first time he really wonders what was hidden behind them, what sorrows and regrets did the late Commander Lina Shepard carry to her cold, lonely grave. But it’s all too late.

She removes her hand from his shoulder, and carefully lifts it to his face. As she is gently running her fingers along his mandible, Garrus wishes he could feel it for real. If this is all wasn’t just his sad imagination taking control.

_“I’m sorry we didn’t have time.”_

Garrus is alone. With so much left unsaid, the silence envelopes him like a heavy blanket.  
For a couple minutes he searches on his omni-tool, then starts playing a song.

_Oh, a storm is threat'ning  
My very life today,  
If I don’t get some shelter,  
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away._


End file.
